rity, by deciding against the governor,
strengthened a growing feeling of discontent with the whole judiciary
among the Democrats, and Douglas took strong ground in favor of
reorganizing the court. In March, addressing a great meeting at
Springfield, he defended the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798,
and when the presidential campaign opened in November he had a debate
with Lincoln and other Whig orators. He was, in fact, the leading
Democratic orator throughout the campaign in Illinois, and there is no
doubt that his enthusiasm and his shrewdness had much to do with the
result there. Of all the Northern States, only Illinois and New
Hampshire went for Van Buren.

Meanwhile, however, he had practiced law with such success that no
account of the Illinois bar of those days omits his name from the list
of eminent attorneys. It was noted that whereas Lincoln was never very
successful save in those cases where his client's cause was just, a
client with but a slender claim upon the court's favor found Douglas a
far better advocate. He never seems to have given much time to the
reading of law or to the ordinary drudgery of preparing cases for trial,
but he mastered the main facts of his cases with the utmost facility,
and his mind went at once to the points that were sure to affect the
decision. Early in his experience as a lawyer he had to be content with
fees that seem absurdly small; once, he rode from Springfield to
Bloomington to argue a case, and got but five dollars for his services.
But he was a first-rate man of business, and soon had a good income from
his profession.

In January, 1841, the legislature, now Democratic in both branches,
removed the Whig incumbent from the office of secretary of state, and
the governor at once appointed Douglas to succeed him. That office,
however, he held less than a month, for the legislature had also
reconstructed the supreme court in such a way as to increase the number
of judges, and in February, being then less than twenty-eight years old,
he was named for one of the new places. One of the reasons why the court
was reconstructed was its opposition to the Democratic position on the
franchise question. Douglas, arguing a famous franchise case before it,
had made himself the champion of unnaturalized inhabitants claiming the
right to vote, and had thus established himself in the good-will of a
large and increasing constituency throughout the State. Under the new
law, each